About Jeremy

http://www.jeremybent.com

Posts by Jeremy Bent:

Jeremy
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Three Years

That’s how long I’ve been in New York. I rolled in here on a Dominican shuttle bus three years ago today and had to take a cab 70 blocks to my friend Bob’s apartment because they didn’t go below 125th St. Blame my dad. The more I think about my move to New York, the more I realize how terribly, terribly unprepared I was. I am shocked my mother didn’t run after that ramshackle passenger van, yelling, “Come back! Come back! You don’t even have a job! Or any prospects! Or a direction in life! Let me bake for you!”

The last couple years I’ve been posting little life reviews at the anniversary mark that look at how far I’ve come since moving here. Considering I started with next to nothing (handful of cash and about three friends in the area), I think I’ve made significant progress. I don’t think I need to review whether the move was a success or not any more. Still, what strikes me now, as my life is going about as well I would expect at year 25, I’m not sure why I wanted to come to New York so badly. I’m glad I did, and I think it’s done a lot for me in almost every aspect of my life, but I’m still curious as to why I was dead set on NYC, considering I had only been here twice before, for only hours at a time.

Being from a small town in a pretty marginal state gave me a desire to be where things are happening. Although that’s true of me, and not so much true for almost everyone I went to school with in Rhode Island. I was perenially bored in Coventry (which was obviously not all RI’s fault), but now I’m perenially busy with things I really enjoy in NYC. I suppose most of the things I do now I could’ve done in Rhode Island, but there’s something about being in New York that engenders a can-be-done, let’s-try-this sort of mentality. You see people making cool things and doing great stuff all the time; it’s natural you want to join in.

So no more reviews. My goal in this next year is to try and quantify why it is that I like New York City so much. I figure that will probably take me a while.

Jeremy
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8 bits are all you need

I’ve been teaching myself the ways of the surprisingly robust Little Sound DJ, a composition tool and music tracker for the Nintendo Game Boy. Coming off the musical high of working with the Apple Sisters, I wanted to keep pushing my brain towards musical endeavors. I got seriously inspired watching the chiptune documentary, Reformat the Planet, and I’d thought I’d try my hand at some 8 bit music.

It’s been interesting. The learning curve on LSDJ is not bad for a program on a system with only 8 buttons. It would’ve been wildly unsuccessful as an actual Game Boy game, because you really do need to read the manual and know how to navigate it, etc. What really shocks me though is how broad the functionality of the program is. Considering the Game Boy is a 20 year old piece of techonology, it’s impressive that you can have it run all of this wave synthesis and so forth with surprisingly complex sound.

I nabbed an old school GB off of ebay the other day, so as soon as I feel comfortable enough with it, I’m going to get the necessary equipment to make my own carts and start playing music off of it. My goal is to come up with a few songs and maybe play an open mike night. There’s a popular one down the street from my apt. that I’d like to perform at if I get some material I like. At the moment I’m torn between whether to keep it all on the Game Boy or to play bass under whatever melody/beat combo I come up with. I assume this will resolve itself when I’ve got things a little more fleshed out. Right now my compositions are more “ringtone” than “actual song.”

Jeremy
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More Excerpts

From Hero With A Thousand Faces:

Whenever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history, mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to reinterpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives is dissolved. Such a blight has certainly descended upon the Bible and on a great part of the Christian cult.

To bring the images back to life, one has to seek, not interesting applications to modern affairs, but illuminating hints from the inspired past. When these are found, vast areas of half-dead iconography disclose again their permanently human meaning.

Bam. J. Campbell just served you, fundamentalists. If you have any interest in the spiritual traditions of the entire planet, you are doing yourself a disservice by not reading this book.

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I can do this.

I’ve been thinking “I can do this” more than I ever have previously in my life. I mean it in the sense of, “If I devote enough time and energy to this, I can accomplish this and accomplish it well.” Cases in point:

-Roller derby: possibly the jumping off point for all this positivity. I started working with the league a year ago, barely being able to skate on quads, not knowing the rules, etc. Now I skate better than 99% of the population (although still one of the worst in the league) and ref with one of the most respected leagues in the country. One year.

-Novel: Although my progress has slackened significantly, I started working on a novel earlier this year independent of NaNoWriMo and was pretty confident it was write something worthwhile. I’m a little stalled on it, mostly due to time, but I won’t give it up. The 80 pages I have still make me laugh, and I easily rate in the best work I’ve done.

-Playing bass for real: I launched myself into playing bass for the Apple Sisters with as much gusto as my four completely unfocused years of playing would let me, and what do you know? It turned out pretty well. I was rarely note perfect in the first few weeks, but I did learn a lot, have fun, and meet some great people. By the second half of our run, the Stems were sounding pretty tight as well.

And so on. I’m approaching a state where my intimidation factor for attaining almost any new skill is zero. I don’t know where my DIY spirit has been hiding my whole life, but it’s finally starting to get me to ignore the fact that I grew up as essentially a talentless child. Now if only I can find a job as a roller-skating comedy bass player. That’s got to exist, right?

Jeremy
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Late to the Party

I saw a couple of minutes of Dr. Horrible a few months ago, but I finally got around to watching the whole thing on Monday. Surprise! It’s great (as everyone besides me has known for months). It’s great in its execution, polish, and general sense of fun. I watched it on Hulu, which should be the model for displaying long form content online. No signup necessary, a few blissfully short but reasonable ads, and an option for HD and full screen. Nice.

What I’m most curious about though, is what this says about distribution. Joss has said the cost of this little feature is somewhere in the low six figures. Since it’s been the Top 10 of iTunes TV Season download chart for weeks now, I’m assuming he’s made at least some of it back, even at the nominal price point of $5. He’s also just released the soundtrack on iTunes as well (an obvious move, considering how catchy the score is). Now, considering how tight-lipped Apple is about sales figures, I don’t know where the numbers actually fall in terms of revenue for the project. But, I’m imagining he’s pulled in at least $100k on this at this point. That may mean he’s very far away from even breaking even on it, but this wasn’t done to make money.

The genesis of this was, I assume, “fun project to do during the writer’s strike.” And it is fun. Really fun. But you’re telling me this isn’t going to inspire some film kids to do the same thing and see if they can make it work for less money? Because I guarantee there’s at least four groups trying to do the same thing right now. They might totally suck. But they might be pretty fun. And nobody can tell them what to do or not do with their video, because they’re not beholden to anyone.

Now, obviously Joss Whedon has a long history of working in TV and film and is going to know how to make a good video without spending too much or wasting money. Also he has the capital to finance a little project like this. But the fact that he just went for it, and showed that people will always respond to quality work, is a good thing. I’d buy a DVD of Dr. Horrible for the right price. So what’s the next mini-project people would buy? Could come from anywhere.

Jeremy
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Shakes-prov

Chris Scott saw the Improvised Shakespeare Co. on Monday at the Del Close Marathon. He urged me to see it on Tuesday after they had done an amazing show off of his suggestion of The Three Laws of Asimov. By Wednesday, during the Walsh workshop, I resolved to wait in the stand-by line for their next sold-out show. And on Thursday, I saw them perform, and got to give a review of my own: utter genius. Friday saw us both signing up for the workshop taught by the originator of the form, and Saturday brought possibly the finest three hour span of instruction I’ve had. Then came Sunday, with the realization, “I really, really want to try to do this.”

Jeremy
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My Bones Have A Bone To Pick

According the generally accepted formula of weight divded by height squared, my Body Mass Index is a 29.2. A BMI of 30.0 or above is considered obese. You might have been able to at least make a case for me being obese 10 years ago, when I was kind of a fat guy. But I’m fairly positive I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been in, definitely thinner than I’ve ever been, and yet, I am on the verge of being a man-cow.

The trick here is that BMI is frequently being given as a statistical guideline for entire populations, as it’s based on numerical norms and averages. It’s not designed as a guideline for individuals, with their different body types and total body fat. This is why my BMI is telling me I am somewhere between “roly-poly” and “decidedly corpulent” despite the fact that I’m more accurately gauged as “casually athletic.” I’m betting a fair amount of my mass is from muscle (not to toot my own horn here) and probably a similar amount of bone, because my skeleton is definitely a few notches up from standard size. I am a fairly large person by any standard, even now in this decidedly healthier phase of my life, which only serves to work against my BMI.

My problem here is that a lot of attention is given to BMI as a means for self-diagnosis on who may be at risk for things like diabetes and heart disease. You could have a guy like me, or what’s more, a serious body builder who was the same weight as me but significantly shorter, who would both be inaccurately rated as obese. Obviously, me and my theoretically squat bodybuilder are not overly concerned with what BMI says about us, but you could have a tall person who had next to no muscle and a fair amount of fat who would be rated as normal, despite being unhealthy. Unfortunately, the precision method of measuring a person’s total body fat (which involves submersion in a water tank, etc.) is much more difficult to do through numbers alone.

I doubt we’d even need an indicator like BMI if America were a little more self-conscious about its health. Considering I used to be one of the least healthy eaters and exercisers I can think of, I can say without a doubt my life is better now that I’m eating better and regularly making use of my body. I still don’t even eat all that well in terms of what I could be eating, but it’s a significant step up from my college diet and it’s made a difference. I know news media loves charts and numbers and home test, but let’s stop pointing to it all the time as a good indicator of health. That’s not what it was designed for, and it’s not accurate in that context. I doubt BMI is really inspiring anyone to make a change. “My god… I’m a 31.3! I’m heading to the gym right now!” So let’s come up with something more accurate, and leave BMI to the actuaries and statisticians that it was designed for.

Jeremy
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Workin’ With Walsh

I took a four-hour improv workshop with UCB founder Matt Walsh last night. I didn’t really know what to expect, because you hear a lot of stories about the old-schoolers and what they’re like, but who knows whether the stories are true, or whether they’re still true about them now. I’m happy to say I enjoyed it, and felt like I definitely took some nice lessons out of it. He was clear and direct and seemed like he was pleased with the general level of skill that’s coming up through the theater. I don’t know that you can ask for much more from a single day workshop, so I’m pleased. My two big realizations I hope to assimilate into my playing are:

The first insight was that you can have game going in a completely simple, unforced way inside of 30 seconds if you’re playing well. I’m defining playing well here as listening to your partner, being clear, and assuming a point of view that you stick to. It doesn’t have to be complex, it doesn’t have to blow anybody’s mind, but if you find that game early, you can start to build your relationship and the rest of the scene much faster. There’s something to be said for a slow-burn kind of scene, but there’s also a lot to be said for not wasting your time. Get out there, get that game, and start building the world through the game.

The second insight was elegantly phrased as “Create less, explore more.” I know I’m guilty of pulling out a ton of references or new additions to no avail if a scene isn’t going much of anywhere. Walsh urged us to treat each new “creation” in a scene as something significant that should be explored and examined before we move on to create something new. It’s easier and more satisfying for the improvisers, and it’s clearer and almost certainly funnier for the audience. That makes for better scenes.

There were some other minor tips I picked up as well, but those were my two big takeaways from the workshop. Both are things I would say I’d heard before, but they were illustrated well or spoken to in a very direct way. DCM has been extremely satisfying for me so far, and we’re not even into the Marathon proper yet. I’m really looking forward to it now; my shows, others’ shows, and the workshop I have on Saturday. Renewed vigor!

Jeremy
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The Myths Just Keep On Coming

More great stuff from The Power of Myth:

Campbell: There are some teachers who decide they won’t teach at all because of what society will do with what they’ve found.

Moyers: What if the hero returns from his ordeal, and the world doesn’t want what he brings back?

Campbell: That, of course, is a normal experience.

Endlessly fascinating, this book. I think Campbell’s first sentence perfectly mirrors what Einstein says about wishing he had become a watchmaker, and the second puts me in mind of Galileo. Except this was a discussion about myths that were thousands of years old. Another gem, especially from an improv perspective:

Campbell: There is an important idea in Nietzsche, of Amor fati, the “love of your fate,” which is in fact your life. As he says, if you say no to a single factor in your life, you have unraveled the whole thing.

Gives a lot more weight to denials, right? You have to accept your life holistically or you have not accepted it all.

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